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Back when i was a kid growing up in Everett, my friends and i found this big sandy hill in the woods. After building forts, rope swings and chopping down 200 foot alder trees for no reason this was a pretty good find.  But what were we gonna do with it?  We couldn’t skateboard down it.  Ah, i know.  Let’s get those Black Snow snowboards that we got from Target for 20 dollars and “sandboard” down them!  This will be rad!

The radness lasted only a few days.  After strapping in atop the 5 foot cliff at the top and bomb dropping to a complete stop followed by multiple cartwheels, or attempting to turn once gaining speed only to fall straight to your grill and receive a mouthful of sand, or actually making it down the hill only to hit grass, rocks and sticks at 20 mph to a complete stop followed by multiple cartwheels—we called it.

Picture Central (aka Ski Acres) on the stickiest day last spring.  Like the kind where after an hour your base looks like you rode through an oil slick.  Well sand boarding is stickier than that.  Or at least it was on the Black Snow snowboard from Target.

Nowadays the woods that i grew up playing in have been replaced by apartments, roads, and light industrial buildings.  But if you’ve never experienced the joy of snowboarding in sand don’t sweat it. Oregon has it’s own sandboarding park!  Complete with rails and boxes for all you jibbers out there. Located just north of Florence on the Oregon coast the Sand Master Park has everything you need for sandboarding–sand board rental, rails, boxes and sand.  They even have contests!

Wow.

Thanks to my man Mike C. for forwarding this little gem.

Tuesday i woke up and checked my email on my iPhone (i have an iPhone). The little ding sound i set to notify me when i got a new message was going off. Over and over and over…

When all was said and done, i had like 150 new emails piped from my Gmail account to my iPhone.

They ended up all coming from YouTube. WTF? I just assumed i got some weird spam bull shiz. Which is partly true.

Backup 1 month: I started uploading a few vids to YouTube to take the traffic/bandwidth dent off my site and figuring it’d drive some new traffic here.

One of the videos i put up was of Harstad riding the dude-tube at Ski Acres (more…)

I had the insane opportunity to go on a “work trip” for VholdR Cameras to the Sierras and do some snow camping with Snowboarder Mag and Leeward Cinemas during their shooting of “My Own Two Feet”, a full length feature snowboard film. It’s a Eco conscience film that doesn’t use snowmobiles, chairlifts or heli’s, hence the name ‘My Own Two Feet’. Check out their latest teaser at -http://leewardcinema.com/2feet/. We covered about 28mi in 6 days, all on foot, base camps were usually around a 10,000ft elevation.

Most of the 12 doods were on Splitboards and a few on snowshoes. Splitboards vs. snowshoes is

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Skiing has gotten more popular over the last 12 years. This translates to more people on the hill, bigger lift lines, more traffic, longer waits, etc. Those of us who ride Alpental have seen this happen first hand over the last few years. I’ve only been riding since 96/97 and i’ve seen the lines grow in that time. Most of the people i ride with have been around for way longer and could second this.

The Summit at Snoqualmie submitted a Master Development Plan (MDP) to the US Forest Service (USFS) in Dec 2005. The Alpental part of that plan has a few improvements that aim to improve skier circulation.

A ski area’s capacity is largely dictated by it’s (more…)

Gillis, JR and Wagner went log jibbing the other day. Get your mind out of the gutter, what i mean is they were jibbing a tree log with their snowboards. At Alpental.

At the run out of Trash Can there’s a large tree that mother nature decided would be a perfect jib for snowboarders. So she knocked it over and wedged it between two other trees. Good lookin out!

There were some pretty rad manuvers thrown down. 50-50 to front 3 out, Method/Sombrero removal combo, 15 foot-to-flat StompPad tea-baggers and of course some epic wrecks. On the gnarliness scale i’d give this maybe a 4.5. I mean it’s no 50footer or anything…but there was definetly some branches, twigs and other trees to get wrapped around if you botched it.

I wonder if they could get arrested for tearing apart a tree that was once old growth on USFS land? That would be funny.

Here’s a shot of Gillis.

Josh Becker took a bunch of pics. Ki took a bunch of pics.

Please, make it stop.

Alpental is open again this coming weekend.

http://www.summitatsnoqualmie.com/info/winter/spring_schedule.asp

So my friend JR did this drop that another friend (Tyler Wagner) spotted at Alpental.

JR is crazy. I wouldn’t even think of dropping this.

WTF!!! Why would you try to do this??!! Look how close JR lands to the edge of the waterfall of death hole kill. But then, STOMP.

Check out pic #1 just for all it’s gnarliness, then the sequence in pic #2. Pic #3 a sic indy.

Siccest shit i’ve seen in a long time.  Brock Carlson took the shots.

Nice work guys.

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PS: Here’s a post about this post on the Duke of Delridge Blog

Edit:   Here’s the shot of N.B. loc Wagner hitting this a couple weeks ago (David Hastings Photo). Evidently on attempt #1 “Ol Dirty Wags” was dealt with by the tree branches over-hanging this drop. Dirty got his gear back together, hiked back up and nailed this stylish lean-indy over the falls, landed and then yelled ‘WHAT!’. Then he chopped off the head of a nearby backcountry skiier with his snowboard.

That is a lie. Tyler did not chop off anybodys head, but this shot is sic. And without googles. ??!! LOL.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday (4/8 and 4/9) i got to ride Baker with no one else. K2 put on their hopefully now annual ‘Kamp K2.’ They did this a few years back–then it was called Festicle. The company rented out Mt Baker ski area and invited both the ski and snowboard teams, a ton of their employees, a bunch of shop people, misc industry people, some Baker locs and a few random dudes like myself.

The two day event was filled with a ton of activities that coupled the difficult and rare combination of coordination and beer drinking. Examples include Flip-Cup, Mechanical Bull rides, Capture the Beer, Mini Banked Slalom, Beer-Pong and Trike Bike Rally.

Actually, back up. I missed an important point here. PBR sponsored this event with 55 kegs of beer. 55 kegs of beer! Of PBR. (On a side note, 1 keg is the equivalent of about 14 cases of beer. 55 kegs equals a little over 9,000 cases of beer. I like to think that required it’s own semi-truck for that delivery). Needless to say, beer was flowing tough, usually mandatory during the activities.

The snow conditions were all time. Visibility was perfect. Hardly anyone was there. It was on. I had a few activities that i was supposed to take part in (a free massage) but opted to ride pow all day. Both days. The sun came out on Weds too. I rode the chair a few times with some people from the east coast who when they were able to see the Arm were trrrrrrrippin! I can only imagine what was going through their heads coming from an icy, flat east coast straight to the most balls-out, powdery place you can. And having it pretty much all to yourself with epic conditions….

Each day was sic. The siccness continued into the night with sic live music, sic costume parties and sic people. DJ Mullet, Vitamin D and Hells Belle’s all provided beats and/or metal for the parties. The partying was nuts. Get a bunch of snow/ski bros together with 55 kegs of PBR, a mini ramp, Rock Bank, beer bongs and 55 kegs of PBR and holy shit…shit goes down!

I finally rode a Gyrator for a few runs–those things are no joke. They tear ASS through pow. Centered stance, little to no leaning back….just like you’ve heard. I’ll probably invest in some sort of non Lib-Tech reverse camber board next year.

So stoked i was able to go. Good times, great conditions, awesome people. Thank you Kamp K2, you’re the best!

Check out the full Gallery from the event.